Five on Friday: Why vote?

Where's the catch?

Come Monday, we take another step towards another chapter in Philippine history. Though many would believe that the coming elections would not result in significant change, there is something you can do. What you choose to do determines your fate.

So why vote?

  1. You don’t want celebrities for a leader. Or you simply don’t want a public official elected solely because of the warmth of their smile, the cheerfulness of their dancing, or the beauty of their endorsers.
  2. You want stop feeling robbed through income taxation. Wouldn’t it be nice to look at your monthly pay slip with a smile, knowing that every peso taken from your income is paying responsible leaders committed to true public service, and that your money is in essence, serving you?
  3. You love your children. Every election is a decision we make for our children, for our children’s children. What you do now is what makes the Philippines they will live in, many years from now.
  4. You want a morally responsible citizenry. Responsible people breed responsible leaders, and responsible leaders breed responsible people. Chicken and the egg, or so they say. But today, we can choose who starts this supposedly endless loop of a cycle. Let’s take the first step, choose wisely.
  5. You want to stay in the Philippines. I don’t want to leave the country just to live the good life. Or the simple life. I want the Philippines to be every reason for us to stay. The Filipino was born to live in the Philippines, to serve other Filipinos.

To borrow and twist JFK’s famous quote: stop asking what the Philippines can do for you, instead ask what you can do for this great country.

But you already know that. Vote wisely. Vote.

And stop whining if you can’t be bothered to make a stand.

7 Responses

  1. I admire your idealism. 🙂

    But it sure changes once you see your relatives start running for office. There are plenty of people in the provinces who are SCUM! and when I say SCUM, they line up in front of your house first thing in the morning to scrape off whatever dole outs you can give them. It’s sickening. I know it’s very irresponsible of me to be thinking of genocide but… is there any other option to get rid of this problem.

    It even makes me less optimistic about living in this country.

  2. @freelance*jervis: I’m sure a lot of us agree with #2! 🙂 But how could that be? Less taxes? Hehehe.

    @benj: I guess it’s not really idealism, but hope and faith in the goodness of man. 🙂

    I understand the concerns you’ve mentioned and personally I do not see a solution to issues of that magnitude in this generation. I sure do hope that maybe decades from now, through education, we have bred responsible citizens who are able to speak, hear, see, and feel what it truly means to be a Filipino.

    Deep yun, idealistic maybe, but that’s what we’ve got at the moment. 🙂

  3. I second the phrase “hope and faith in the goodness of man”. . . and woman too, lest we forget.

    Markku, let’s just say that in the 5 1/2 years I’ve been elsewhere, I’ve never really left. 🙂

    So how are we doing? Do send me the details. 🙂

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